Every spring for the last two decades I travel to Rapid City to teach design of experiments (DOE) for the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSMT). The highlight of these classes comes when students compete in a flyoff of their paper helicopters developed via the multifactor tools of DOE. They provide an awesome demonstration of design of experiments.
Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic made it impossible for students to team up this year. However, this provided the opportunity for them to each do their their own experiments. I provided an extensive number of suggestions via this DOE It Yourself compilation. Most of the students chose one of these, but a few came up with new ones, such as the one of legal drinking age who sipped tiny amounts (for tasting only, I was assured) of variously concocted Margaritas. The variety of experiments amazed me:
- Cooking eggs to perfection
- Playing tabletop hockey
- Blending a most refreshing Margarita
- Shooting Nerf arrows
- Sharpening up hand-eye coordination
- Flying paper helicopters
- Soaking colors into celery
- Finding fabrics with maximum absorbency
- Making the perfect cup of coffee
- Baking delicious cookies (I asked to be on the taste panel for round 2)
- Mixing good Gatorades
- Producing the perfect puffed rice
- Manufacturing fearsome fighter jets
- Catapulting projectiles with a clothes-pin
- Chipping golf balls more accurately (I wish this could translate to my game)
- Breaking paper clips for stress relief
- Creating craters in the kitchen
- Spinning balls down a funnel
- Sinking boats with too much treasure (see video by Nghia Thai )
Congratulations to SDSMT and their students of DOE for such great work—them not letting the pandemic get in the way for learning how to experiment more effectively via these statistically rigorous, multifactor methods.